


Doing It Right

by cimorene



Category: The Social Network
Genre: College, Established Relationship, Frottage, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:15:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cimorene/pseuds/cimorene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's actually a subject of some curiosity for Mark whether Wardo really likes that many people that much, or if somewhere under the dense shell of affability and social conditioning there's a tiny core of judgmental superiority. Not because Wardo's ever given any sign of it, and Mark's done some judicious digging when Wardo was at his most inebriated - it's just that, well, he also likes <em>Mark</em>.</p><p>Really, he obviously does. It's not like Wardo gets anything else in particular out of their friendship, not anything he couldn't get from anyone else. He's better at algorithms than Mark is, and he's not even studying programming. Wardo is wealthier, taller, more fashionable, more social, and more conventionally attractive. Mark is marginally stronger and also better at fencing, but Wardo shows no signs of being a fencing fetishist, and it's not like he needs Mark to carry his books for him. It's usually Wardo who ends up carrying Mark's things that he forgets to take with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doing It Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zephyrprince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephyrprince/gifts).



Since they first met, Wardo has introduced Mark to at least ten or twenty people. Mark doesn't remember most of them anymore, and it's more than possible that there were some other introductions he wasn't even paying attention to at the time.

Mark, on the other hand, has only introduced Wardo to Chris and Dustin. Wardo usually introduces himself, and Mark doesn't really do introductions anyway. He remembers people's names, but that's just because his memory is better than average. It's certainly not usually because he wants to know them.

The point is that Wardo and Mark have wildly different approaches to people. Mark's not going to say that his is worse, because it obviously leads to fewer boring conversations with people who used to sit two rows away from him in freshman seminar, but it also leads to fewer friends and he knows that by most people's standards cheerful, friendly Wardo would be the more successful specimen of humanity.

He's also not going to say that Wardo's approach is worse, even though he usually has no hesitation about declaring his methods superior to those sanctioned by the majority of his peers -- if the majority of those peers are stupid, which, let's face it, even at Harvard, they are. So no, being the kind of guy who's still friendly with everyone from his floor in Thayer wouldn't have worked for Mark, but it's probably okay for Wardo.

Mark estimates that on a typical day he talks to 4-6 people: his roommates and Wardo, plus a couple of other conversations - people in the dining hall or the student center, maybe a teacher. Wardo talks to that many people on a typical trip to the dining hall, and that's when he's already with Mark, which means for the most part he sits with Mark, too.

It's actually a subject of some curiosity for Mark whether Wardo really likes that many people that much, or if somewhere under the dense shell of affability and social conditioning there's a tiny core of judgmental superiority. Not because Wardo's ever given any sign of it, and Mark's done some judicious digging when Wardo was at his most inebriated - it's just that, well, he also likes _Mark_.

Really, he obviously does. It's not like Wardo gets anything else in particular out of their friendship, not anything he couldn't get from anyone else. He's better at algorithms than Mark is, and he's not even studying programming. Wardo is wealthier, taller, more fashionable, more social, and more conventionally attractive. Mark is marginally stronger and also better at fencing, but Wardo shows no signs of being a fencing fetishist, and it's not like he needs Mark to carry his books for him. It's usually Wardo who ends up carrying Mark's things that he forgets to take with him.

So the hypothesis that Mark's personality freely expresses some characteristic that Wardo secretly or subconsciously envies is a viable one, and that quality would have to be his arrogance, which is something that Wardo seems to be blind to while other people find it irritating. Except that, again, all Mark's digging can't uncover a hint of this hypothetical buried assholery.

Which is kind of worrying, because it means he can't figure out what keeps Wardo around.

Of course, Mark would have to be a lot more oblivious than people accuse him of being to miss the fact that Wardo _is_ usually around - even before Wardo got drunk the night of the Bill Gates talk and gave Mark his second blowjob of the day (Mark is a teenaged guy, and Wardo is currently the source of a steady supply of orgasms; Mark has never been more aware of the presence of another person). At this point, Mark accepts and expects Wardo's constant presence, but he still wants to know _why_.

Part of this is scientific curiosity. Mark has never seen anyone as cheerfully determined about _anything_ as Wardo apparently is about being friends with him, and he's seen Labradors playing fetch and little sisters desperate to hang out in his room. Wardo doesn't even act determined; he's just always there, and he makes it seem so natural that Mark's roommates don't wonder why he's there, they wonder why he isn't.

So, part of it is scientific curiosity, because Mark is frankly impressed by Wardo's constant presence, apparently sincere friendliness, ability to insinuate himself into Mark's room, and of course his hair. But the bigger part of it is because Mark is intensely fascinated by Wardo's golden fucking sun-kissed Brazilian skin and his long girly eyelashes and huge Bambi eyes and his blinding grin and the sharp bones of his hips and spine that Mark only occasionally glimpsed up until a few weeks ago, thanks to Wardo's habit of dressing in his meticulously buttoned-down Future Business Leaders of the Americas outfits.

Which brings Mark back around to the fact that if he knew what he was doing right, so to speak, he could at least decide how possible it would be for him to do more of it; and maybe he could understand Wardo a little better.

Wardo knows Mark better than his own mother, but every time Mark's with Wardo and a group of other people it seems like it turns out that someone there knows something about Wardo better than Mark does, even if it's just a "Remember that time" thing.

Which is fine. If Wardo wasn't such a nice guy, he probably wouldn't like Mark, either. And then the whole question would be moot, and also Mark wouldn't have had nearly as much sex this semester.

Mark keeps an eye out for the key to Wardo. It's something he does automatically, not something he plans for and carefully catalogs and analyzes. It's sort of stupid, actually, what Wardo does to him.

Preparing to expand to Yale, Columbia, and Stanford necessitates a week of basically full-time coding. (Mark is also going to his classes and occasionally doing his homework, apparently, because nobody is flunking him, but he's only vaguely aware of all that.) Normally that would take up his whole brain for the week, but after less than a month of extremely frequent regular sex with Wardo, Mark's brain has added another track full of nothing but sex.

His waking hours and his dreams alike are filled with lines of code and pages of UI chasing around sense-memories and thoughts like _Next time in the shower because then Wardo would be all wet_ , with occasional breaks for things like the smell of pizza or someone snapping their fingers in front of his face to ask him a question.

"-said, when was the last time you stood up from that chair?" Wardo is saying.

"I'm not hungry," Mark replies automatically, eyes darting back to the screen.

"It's not dinnertime," says Wardo patiently.

"Dustin and Chris -"

"Are sleeping."

Wardo's face is pink and his hand is cold on Mark's shoulder; the door to Mark's bedroom is closed behind him. Mark's not entirely sure that _he's_ not sleeping. "What time is it?" he says finally.

"I asked first," Wardo says, smiling lopsidedly. "It's almost two. Come on, you have that test tomorrow at nine." He moves his grip on Mark's shoulder to his elbow and tugs gently, but Mark is willing to stand up if Wardo wants him to; he doesn't need to be pulled.

"I really need to piss," he announces.

Wardo steers him to the door and gives him a little push. "That's nice, Mark." He's laughing. Mark likes it when Wardo laughs. "You can brush your teeth while you're in there."

Mark's aware that was a dig about his personal hygiene, but whatever, he reeks. He pees and brushes his teeth and splashes cold water on his face, and realizes, disturbingly, that he actually isn't sure when the last time he stood up was. He's definitely been to eat, but he's not sure when that was, or even whether he's gone to the bathroom since then.

He also realizes that he is actually awake and not asleep. Wardo's face has a habit of appearing blurrily in front of him in either state lately, smiling or laughing, serious or worried or blissed-out on sex.

The last time Mark slept he's pretty sure he dreamed they had a long and involved conversation about Disney World. Unless that really happened. It's at least within the realm of possibility, unlike the one where Wardo revealed that he was actually Spiderman, or the one where Mark asked him to help form a Beatles cover band and they somehow ended up re-enacting the John and Yoko cover of Rolling Stone.

When Mark gets back to his room, his laptop is closed and the book bag and dirty laundry that were on his bed have been pointedly moved to his desk chair. Wardo's at the window, drinking the remains of what has to be some very flat beer.

"Wardo, have we ever talked about Disney World?" Mark asks.

"What?" Wardo stares at Mark over the top of the beer, even more wide-eyed than usual. "What about Disney World?" he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. He's still wearing his jacket and scarf, Mark notices.

"Never mind. Did you need something? Your Econ book was under the bed."

"No, I got it yesterday," says Wardo. "I'm just on my way back from a study group meeting."

They were probably "studying" in a bar and he's just stopped to make Mark go to bed. He's not planning to stay, hence the outer wear.

"Ah," says Mark. He nudges the pile of clothes out of the way and sits in his desk chair, suddenly burning with contrariness, even though he thought up until right this moment that he had every intention of letting Wardo bully him into going to sleep.

Wardo sighs, "Mark." Mark flicks at the catch of his laptop, not quite opening the lid. He doesn't look up. "You can only go so long on beer as a replacement for food and sleep, you know."

"I slept last night," says Mark. It's almost true: he slept until 11 pm after his 3 o'clock lecture, then got up and coded until his lab this morning.

"That's a start," Wardo mutters, running a hand through his hair distractedly.

"It's an odd hour for a study group," Mark observes. It sort of bursts out of him, but he controls his voice to sound snide, rather than petulant.

"What?"

"I said it's a strange time to be coming home from a study group. I mean, if it's an all-night study session, you'd still be there. You're obviously not, and you don't have enough stuff with you to indicate you were at one and left early. If it's simply an evening study session, like the one you have scheduled every other Tuesday for example, one would expect it to break up a little earlier for the people with morning classes, rather than at two."

Wardo is staring at him. Mark stares back as blankly as possible.

"Mark - are you seriously - " Wardo pauses, takes a deep breath. "It's Tuesday. The meeting got pushed back, though, because Tommy and Sonya are both in a play this week. And I left my notes with Eliza so she could make copies before class tomorrow, by the way. What is _wrong_ with you?"

Mark's not actually angry. It's not like he thinks Wardo is _cheating_ on him. There probably are study sessions that could pose a threat to stable sexual relationships on campus - notably on the premises of the final clubs - but Mark knows that Wardo doesn't belong to any of them. It's just that he's probably been out keeping a whole circle of people entertained with his disarming grin and patiently explaining things to them with all the ease of, well, Wardo at a business mixer, and then he came here to make sure Mark sleeps before his test but he hasn't even taken his shoes off.

"It might be insomnia," says Mark, to the question about what's wrong with him, and Wardo, true to form, snorts tiredly, letting go of the offended bristling.

"I doubt it. I've never seen anyone with a more advanced ability to fall asleep during movies."

"I mean, I might not sleep tonight," Mark says carefully. "I'm not sure."

"Mark -"

"You could make sure."

Wardo licks his lips, and Mark can see him mentally switch gears, his eyes glittering suddenly with interest. His eyes are incredible. It's kind of unfair and should probably be creepy how large and pretty they are. "So you're saying I'm boring?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of staying to make sure I didn't get up, but now that you mention it, I've heard orgasms recommended as a cure for insomnia."

"Mark, orgasms don't always make you close your laptop, let alone shut off your brain." Wardo's mouth is curling at the edges now because he's trying not to smile, and he's draped himself back against the wall next to Mark's desk, languid.

"When someone asks me if I would really keep coding if they crawled under my desk and blew me, I take that as a challenge," Mark explains. And it's not like he wrote very much code while Wardo was there, anyway. He spent what felt like five or ten minutes just debating whether he had to keep his hands on the keys to prove a point, or could run them through Wardo's hair like he wanted.

Wardo grins and comes a little closer to Mark in the desk chair. "So maybe I could just dare you to go to sleep?"

Mark leans back in his chair and turns it to the side to more directly meet Wardo's eyes. "Doubtful," he says, as Wardo moves in between his splayed knees and bends over him. "My plan has a lower margin for error."

"Only if I stay awake to watch you. Or tie you up."

"If you're into that," Mark says instantly, surprising both of them.

Stupid, he thinks, watching the surprised look flicker in Wardo's eyes, but the look just melts into a mischievous smile. "Don't think I won't remember that," Wardo says, wrapping one of his long-fingered hands around Mark's wrist on the arm of his chair and leaning in to kiss him.

Wardo's mouth is slick with chapstick, tastes like beer and coffee, and feels hot and teasingly soft. He mouths gently at Mark's lower lip and then pulls back, dragging a grunt of protest from Mark.

"Bed," Wardo explains, smiling a crooked little smile.

Mark rips his t-shirt off and sheds pants and boxers on his way to the bed, watching Wardo finally hang up his coat and scarf and toe off his shoes with grim satisfaction. He claims the privilege of unbuckling Wardo's belt for himself while Wardo fumbles his way through the annoyingly small buttons on his shirt, eyes fixed on Mark and pupils dilated. "You forgot the light," Mark says into Wardo's mouth as he pulls him into bed.

 _"Mark,"_ Wardo replies, and grabs Mark's head with both hands to pull him into a kiss. He's still got his pants half on and one knee on the bed. It's a pose that makes it easier to reach past his briefs to his cock. Mark believes in taking advantage of opportunities.

Wardo groans satisfyingly and flails, trying to kick his pants off without letting go of Mark's face.

The first time they did this Mark didn't know where to put his hands - there was so much of Wardo to touch, and it was like he was suddenly overloaded with a long list of places to touch carefully in order, like a backed-up queue when a connection comes online. Mark's hands were trying to touch them all at once, without any conscious decision on his part: the little knobs of spine at the back of his neck, the dip of his back, the fleshy side of his waist, the bony hips that dig into Mark's ass when they lie in bed together because Mark inevitably rolls away at some point after he falls asleep, and then Wardo curls up around him, hands on Mark's stomach, knees and feet nudging Mark's legs.

Mark has had time now to learn the best places, and he reels Wardo in by one hip, running the other hand down Wardo's side, feeling the ripples of ribs in his palm and Wardo's quick, heaving breaths. Wardo tips his head back right away when Mark urges him into his lap and licks the rough edge of Wardo's jaw, nosing down his long neck.

"Like this?" asks Wardo breathlessly, wiggling to settle himself between Mark's thighs.

"Yeah," Mark mumbles into Wardo's throat, teeth scraping his Adam's apple. A sharp shudder crawls down Wardo's spine and he tightens his arm around Mark's neck and gropes between them for their cocks.

"Can you -" Wardo mumbles, and then he gets his sweaty hand around both of them and shuts up and squeezes. "Fuck."

Mark whole-heartedly agrees. He drags his mouth down the tendons of Wardo's neck a few times while Wardo is getting the right grip, thinking vaguely that some lube would have made this go better, but if he's not stopping to get the light he's sure as fuck not shoving Wardo out of his lap to fish the lube out from - they might have left it at the desk after testing his chair on Saturday night.

Suddenly Wardo gets the perfect grip and fists both of them in one long, perfect stroke that makes Mark's leg jerk involuntarily. "Come on, Wardo," he hisses, clutching Wardo's hips, and then Wardo's thrusting through his fist just exactly right, and it's everything Mark needed and couldn't begin to ask for, like Wardo read his fucking mind.

After that it's a little bit of a blur - Wardo's golden neck and long, long legs, grabbing at his ass, fingers digging in so hard Wardo chokes out a surprised laugh - until Wardo leans their foreheads together. His eyes are really big and so changeable: you could stare at Mark's eyes all day and not see half of what's going on in Wardo's eyes right now, it's really - Mark needs to shut up.

Wardo kisses him obligingly, and instead of babbling - anything else, Mark sucks on his tongue, hips stuttering the last few beats before he comes. Wardo shifts and pushes him back against the wall, which isn't very comfortable but it turns Mark on so much when Wardo gets like this that all he can do is lie there while Wardo squirms and thrusts against his stomach, and finally slumps down against him, forehead on his shoulder.

Mark shifts his head a little so the wall isn't pressing so hard on the back of his skull and lightly pets the hair at the nape of Wardo's neck.

"I could fall asleep like this," Wardo muses.

"Then I definitely couldn't get up without you noticing," says Mark.

"That wasn't a suggestion," Wardo snorts. He tips his head up, wincing. "Get some tissues."

There's a box beside the bed. Mark manages to grab a handful to swipe most of the come off their bellies while Wardo stretches himself out along Mark's side under the comforter.

"Are you okay?" he asks. "You seemed weird."

Mark drawls, "You've never complained before."

Wardo eyerolls and slings an arm around Mark's waist, dragging him closer. "I mean it. If you - I mean - you know you can call me if you want me to come over?" He bites his lip, eyes glimmering uncertainly. "I would've left earlier."

"You can stay at your study group all night if you want. I'm not jealous," Mark says, louder than he meant.

"Believe me, I know," says Wardo, glancing away from him.

Mark folds his arms under the comforter and stares at his closed bedroom door. "I didn't even know what time it was, you'll remember," he tells the door. "Ergo, I couldn't notice what time you came over. However, I did notice that you weren't intending to stay."

"You - what?"

"You left your shoes and scarf on and you didn't unbutton your coat. You obviously had somewhere else to be."

Wardo stares at him. "Yeah. _Bed."_

"You can sleep here," Mark shrugs.

"You're the one who has a test in the morning." Wardo doesn't sound mad or anything, though.

When Mark looks down at him, he's rolled onto his back and is looking straight up at the ceiling, smiling slightly. His smile looks different when he's lying on his back. Gravity does things to his cheeks, and with that and the sex-hair and sex flush he looks dopey and thoroughly fucked. It's enough to kind of turn Mark on again.

"Come here," Wardo says, with that slightly dopey smile, and jerks on Mark's arm till he slides down and puts his head on the pillow. There's a smell of sweat and sex imprinted in it, and a definite hint of Wardo.

"You left the light on," Mark points out, curling on his side. He guesses that makes him John Lennon, although Wardo is the flexible one.

"It's your light," says Wardo, but of course he gets up and turns it off. Mark watches him pad across the floor naked, fluffy hair to square, narrow shoulders, down his smooth pale tan back to his narrow muscular ass, his endless legs to his bony ankles.

Wardo is unquestionably beautiful, Mark thinks. The only saving grace is that he is actually Jewish, so at least he can't dance.

"How do you feel about the Beatles?" says Mark.

Lights off, Wardo crawls back up the bed to him and gives him a quizzical look in the light from the window. "Uh... positive?"

"Never mind," Mark says, reaching out to hold the comforter up for Wardo to crawl in.

Usually he might not just let it go, but now Wardo just yawns, so Mark does too. Mark has two pillows, but a twin bed with two guys in it doesn't leave a lot of room for extra pillows, and Wardo long ago picked up the habit of throwing the extra one out of bed. Mark didn't bother to pick it up the last time, so it's probably on the floor somewhere. Wardo is on his side facing Mark, doing all those little twitches of a body settling in for sleep, tangling his knees with Mark's, the side of his hand brushing against Mark's chest.

Mark scoots closer and nudges his nose into Wardo's improbably long neck. Wardo's neck always smells nice (except presumably after a workout or something, although Mark hasn't smelled it then).

"We _haven't_ talked about Disney World, though, right?" he whispers.

"Mmm, no," says Wardo, and Mark can tell from his voice that he's half asleep already. "But I was thinking New York." Wardo's voice is rough and Mark knows his eyes are closed; he's mumbling too, too sleepy to realize he hasn't opened his mouth all the way.

Mark swallows. "What?"

"Spring Break," says Wardo, "we c'n go to New York."

They went on Spring Break together last year too, so there's no reason to, but Mark's heart still trips at the thought of Wardo planning a trip for them - just them traveling together, maybe staying in a hotel, out in the world away from the bubble of Kirkland.

Mark looks up, and Wardo's asleep. "Yeah," he says anyway, "we can."

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to ME Curtin for beta. The author does not claim any knowledge of coding or which Harvard dorm Mr. Saverin actually lived in as a freshman (because Wikipedia didn't know).


End file.
